Dark-winged angel
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: (anime) The infusion of the metal into his body, Edward is constantly reminded of his sin and feels more inhuman. Colonel Mustang forces Edward to face his shame.


**Fandom: Full Metal Alchemist  
Title: Dark-winged Angel  
Pairing: Roy x Edward  
Rating: PG-13  
Description: The infusion of the metal into his body, Edward is constantly reminded of his sin and feels more inhuman. Colonel Mustang forces Edward to face his shame.**

**Disclaimer: Full Metal Alchemist isn****'****t mine, but the poem is.  
**

I don't want to be here.  
I don't want to learn to belong here.  
Where do I go once I've fallen?  
I've looked to the skies for a response,  
but it doesn't answer back.  
It ignores me with all of its heart.

I live in delusion  
that maybe someday I'll be able to regain  
what I've ultimately lost  
and go back to where I used to be,  
to the person who first resided in this body…

But you're not allowed to.

It's equivalent trade after all…

Why is it the one mantra we live by  
seems to be synonymous with the label  
for our death?

For just a little bit…  
Take me away from this reality.  
Please, just one moment.

**Dark-winged angel  
By miyamoto yui  
**  
In this darkness that surrounds us both externally and internally, I want to touch you.

You are an angel with large, flourishing black wings that cover you. One side is as soft as pillows. The other side is made of delicate metal blades. They want to keep you from any kind of harm. Because of them, I'm unable to come close to you; they serve as things to keep you away through defensive tactics.  
I want to reach out to you with the tips of my fingertips, but you are off in a another world. You look off into one corner of this bedroom.

The sky is crying, but it seems like the snow has melted and this is the aftermath of its violent feelings, rushing down in rivers unable to be held back any longer.

Your blond hair is wet and I've ripped your shirt away out of anger. I see the intricate steel arm fused into your flesh and I want to feel it with my fingers. My pyrotex gloves are of no use and they've been discarded on the way here to this very point in time and destination. Somehow, along the way, I don't see any use for them. They've become utterly useless.

I want to capture you with my fingertips and see what is going on, but you are just standing there. And then you take one step forward. Your step is so heavy and you sigh as if it is painful.

I know it is.

You look at the sky for redemption but I am staring straight at you wondering what you will do. Why are we the ones standing in this rain as it pounds deeper into us through our skin?

"Don't look at me."

That is the first thing you say to me.

I can't ever tell what you want me to do with that kind of tone in your voice. The one where you are super irritated as if you don't want to talk to anyone when in reality, I can read through it all so easily.  
I know you want someone to be there. I want to embrace you with all that I have to give, but my pride and your ego clash in this simple task that should come naturally to all humans and yet we are unable to comply to this unspoken request.

You almost want to cover your hand made of flesh over your metal arm.

But I look at this scene with melancholic warmth. It moves me because you seem more human, more vulnerable than when you say to the world that you can do anything and I know that you're just trying your best to survive, not knowing what else to believe in as little by little, each petal that you take away from the flower that bloomed for you has been picked and tossed aside, hoping that it will grow once more after withering.  
If at all.

I want to say it is absolutely beautiful and exquisite, that I would not change anything. That that it is okay. Would you believe me though?  
When I saw what you had gone through that day and when you got that metal arm anyway, I wouldn't change you.  
As you clenched your teeth from attaining your "other" arm, those eyes of yours flashed with such determination that I couldn't think of anything more profound. It wouldn't leave me. Your eyes integrated into my vision. I became blinded by this memory that repeated every single day, without or with your presence.

I loved you even then, but would you believe me now? Even as I pulled you closer to me and gradually ripped certain pieces of you away? I know it's too much to ask now…

It sounds so foolish for me to say I fell in love with a boy no taller than so high and no older as if I had a younger brother half my age. And yet, I wanted to recapture that energy that I had lost, having lost my innocence and sanity to the war known in Ishbal and the one known as "myself". The massacre that was done by duty, staining my hands until red came out invisibly through my mouth and depleting my sanity each and every day since its occurrence.

The war still carries on in my head…

You continue to look up to the darkness of the ominous sky and I wonder where do those black angel wings hide most of the time? Why are these brilliant wings the very barrier that separates us, even from ourselves?

I don't want you to stain your hands as I have, but I cannot protect you from everything. I know I can't.  
I desperately can't. And it makes me angry inside.

I may be your worst adversary. Even worse than guilt or yourself.

Just like right now. I cannot keep you from this sadness eating me inside and it is infecting you too.  
It's a leprosy that devours my humanity and will soon kill what is left of my soul. In the end, I am worthless no matter what I have done or may plan to do.

You don't put your hair in a braid anymore. You let it fall carelessly over your back. You don't seem to care anymore about yourself. Have you lost all hope? I don't know why you want to show your confusion, disarray from the mind extending to the hairs on your head. What is it you want to grasp and devour with your golden eyes?

"Edward," I open my mouth to say to acknowledge to both of us that I am still there and I won't let go.

"What do you want from someone like me?" he says. A moment of wisdom so deep that I cannot even begin to explain anything.  
"Someone like you?" I ask, repeating the end of the question, both asking him and myself.  
"I don't know. The more I figure stuff out, the more inhuman I feel." He raises his metal arm and brings it down again. "I feel like this is infecting me rather than aiding me now."

On the balcony, he drops to the ground and shouts to the sky in frustration while pounding his fists on the floor below him.

Before I know it, I find myself taking off my wet coat and putting it over his shoulders. If I could have kissed his shoulders, I would have by then. But since we were out in public, to do this kind of thing would have been a judgment on decency and would have been seen as an atrocity.

He pushes my jacket away. He lets it slip to the wooden floor as he kneels firmly planted in his place. He then stands up straight, tall, and proud. I don't know what to make of it.

"What do you hope to accomplish by acting this way?"  
"I want to get back what I lost." Then, he turns around to watch me with tears in his eyes. "But I don't know what I lost. Along the way, I must have discarded something, but I thought I picked all of that carefully, especially with all that planning. But, now, here I am thinking about what I have lost because there's something missing as I go about my business."

His eyes desperately observe me for an explanation. "Why did you bring me here?! I should be outside now! I have to leave and I want to go NOW!"

I walk towards him. I reach out to his back as he starts to walk away from me towards the direction of the front door. I push my hand, half against the metal while the other half touches the flesh of his back.

"Stop!" he shouts at me as if in a loss, a cry that is more than the yearning of whatever his heart is asking in some sort of eternal prayer.  
"Don't touch me!" He screams at me as if I am burning him, but I keep on holding on anyway.

I ignore comfortability.

Pushing all discretion aside, I wrap both of my arms around him, one over his waist and the other over his shoulders. I bury my face into his metal shoulder and try to feel the pain he lives by leading two different lives.

I know this more than anyone.

Calmly, I grasp onto him a bit firmer. "I know more than anyone about how you feel."  
"Do you?" he questions, almost feebly, but allthemore defensively. He's only half convinced on my part and the other half he cannot believe for himself. "You're good at talking."

Then, he begins to laugh as the rain soaks my white blouse and absorbs the tears of the sky from his body, seeping also through his skin from his burdened heart. I am disconcerted by this.

"You say you know me, or at least, _want_ to know me, but what did you just do?" He then pushes my arms aside with a silent anger as he turns around. He pulls on his tattered shirt as his fiery, vampire eyes watch me with such thorough examination that I think I am already being judged for my sentence at the apocalypse. "You did this. YOU."

"I was trying to make you see my point." I take a deep breath. I am annoyed. I don't want to play this game anymore. "If you think I just wanted to get off on your body, then that's your own damn business.  
"That's your problem, Edward. It's the same as mine. You don't want to let anyone in. You don't want anyone to understand."

"I don't have to stay here to hear this crap while something could be happen-"

I hold his chin with one hand to face me. I wasn't going to have him walk out on me. I wasn't going to make it that easy. "Do you really think that I would strategize just to have it all fall in the end? And don't you trust them to take care of themselves without you around? Especially Al."

"Now don't be pulling that on me! That's low. Even for you." His eyes become even smaller, but I continue to hold onto his chin. "Now let me go! I have to do something and you're wasting my time!"

Am I really such a waste of time to you? Through it all, even if it's like this, out of pride, lust, or whatever sin I' ve committed, I am able to touch you. But you're still out of my reach. What am I doing here?

Why did I stop my whole world for you? To have this one night with you…

"I'm not pulling anything. You've got to stop running away," I tell him. I watch his eyes.

We are staring deeply into each other now and he isn't resisting. His eyes are analyzing what I think without even hearing my words.

I feel like I am talking to the reflection of myself.

"You're doing the same thing I'm doing."

I stop breathing for a moment. It may be something insignificant to others, but this must have been the hardest speech I ever had to make. It's also the most difficult to admit.  
I thought I had lost all humanity within me, but these eyes always reminded me of how much of a human I was…

That's why I can't stop reaching to touch you.

"I have to get out there…" He tells me with his guard weakening.

Almost in slow motion, I see my precious one with the strong face, crumble. His face breaks from its cemented statue form. It cracks and falls to the ground with a tear. His eyebrows almost touch one another. His eyes keep on blinking to hold the tears back. "I have to protect Al. I have to get his body back because I promised."

He shakes his head as he gasps for air. I continue to watch him, pretending to be indifferent, but actually very attentive. Inside, I too am crumbling.

"I…I have to make it back to Mom."

He takes another deep breath as he sobs quietly. The softening rain mixes with our sorrow as it falls down to the ground and flows in whatever direction.

"I have so many things to do and…I'm so scared. I'm scared of dying and of being alone. That I won't ever get to wherever I'm fighting my hardest to get to."

I close my eyes and touch my forehead to his as I drop my hand from his chin. I hold onto his shoulders. He twitches a little as I grip onto him.  
"I know," I assure him.

"Ishbal…  
I had to make it back to them. I wanted to repay my sins, but how was I supposed to do that?

I had to live for them. For every single one of them. Until the day I die."

I opened my eyes once more to look at him gazing at the ground.

"I am not doing it to be heroic. And in the end, it'll probably mean nothing. It will probably not comfort me in any way, but this is what I know. And that's the way I'll live."

It is then that Edward's eyes lift themselves off the ground. He slowly makes his way up to look deeply into mine once more. Putting his hand over the fused flesh and machinery of a shoulder, he squeezes my hand with his cold, metal fingers. "And this is the proof of my shame."

"At least you're brave enough to be able to show it to everything and everyone around you."

He steps back and calmly goes into the bedroom. I look up to the water pouring down from the sky and thank kami-sama for whatever miracle happened right then.

Then, I go inside. I close the door behind me, but when I turn around, I am surprised. Okay, I am shocked to the point that one of my eyebrows rise. I lean on the door just a bit so that I can keep my composure.

He didn't go to the bathroom at all to take a shower or change his clothes. With his head bent a bit forward, his bare back is in front of me. His clothes are in a heap on his feet.

Even through this darkness, his beautiful, slender body stares back at me.  
I open my mouth a little. I can't make a comment. There are no words to describe this moment. I feel defeated in a way, but equally as awed.

As if reading my thoughts, he simply says, "No, I'm not courageous at all."

I walk over to him and stand in back of him. I can see his wings before me. They are still blocking my way, but I push through. Almost shakily, different from the confident attitude I give to the world, in this four-cornered sanctuary, I finally reach out to him.

I am able to get through.

"You are. You just never know it. You always keep it hidden from your own eyes."

As I settle my hands on his ribs, I lean forward to kiss his shoulder, half metal and half flesh touching my mouth. He tastes of the salt of tears, his own and the sky's. He tenses up a little.  
Shaking his head, he still denies, "No, I'm not. You just think I am…"  
"No. I've always admired you for being so humble."

I slowly kneel down as my hands gently hold onto him while my tongue licks the smooth skin over his spine…  
**  
*/*/*/*/*/**

I just simply admire him, still molesting him, but only with my eyes. His naked body is bent over mine with both his knees touching my ribs. His sweat drips onto my body as mine seeps into the bed underneath us. His hands are a few inches away from my head as he looks down at me with a tired expression on his face.

But, you are smiling down at me.

And invisibly, I can see the magnificent stains extending from your body.

Those are your dark wings, stained with guilt, but innocent as an angel.

I lean up to kiss him, but not on the mouth. I press my lips on his metal shoulder.

With this, I am quietly sealing the pact I had made to myself when I first looked into your intense eyes: I will keep my silent promise to you by trying to help you find what you're searching for in this damned world. I won't stop until you've found it, Edward.

But also, in this single gesture alone, confidently and with all my heart,  
I know have gained all that I thought I have lost.

Or at least, rectified most of my broken self.

**Owari. / The End.**

**Author****'****s note:** This fic came up because of a beautiful doujinshi pic I saw. I was inspired, but this fic took a whole month to create due to time constraints and the fact that I wanted it to be really dense. I wanted it to be very multi-layered. I always work towards trying to convey the strong emotions from inside me into your own mind and body.

**Saturday, October 23, 2004**


End file.
